Evans v. Britton
| Decision Date | 15 October 1980 |
| Docket Number | No. 79-2674,79-2674 |
| Citation | 628 F.2d 400 |
| Parties | John Louis EVANS, III, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Robert G. BRITTON, Commissioner, Alabama Board of Corrections, and Joseph Oliver, Warden, Holman Prison, Respondents-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
John L. Carroll, Dennis N. Balske, Montgomery, Ala., Steven Alan Reiss, Washington, D. C., for petitioner-appellant.
Charles A. Graddick, Atty. Gen., Edward E. Carnes, Asst. Atty. Gen., Montgomery, Ala., for respondents-appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.
Before VANCE and SAM D. JOHNSON, Circuit Judges, and THOMAS, * District Judge.
John Louis Evans, III, was convicted of capital murder by a jury and was sentenced to death in an Alabama state court. In his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition for habeas corpus relief, denied by the district court, 472 F.Supp. 707, he alleges that because the Alabama death penalty statute, Code of Ala. § 13-11-2 (1975), deprived him of due process of law and equal protection and constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the United States Constitution, his conviction must be reversed. The Alabama statute precludes the jury from considering lesser included offenses in capital cases; thus it gives the jury the option of convicting a defendant of the capital offense or of acquitting him.
In Beck v. Alabama, --- U.S. ----, 100 S.Ct. 2382, 65 L.Ed.2d 392 (1980), the United States Supreme Court was presented with a challenge to the Alabama death penalty statute and held that a death sentence could not constitutionally be imposed after a jury verdict of guilt of a capital offense, when the jury was not permitted to consider a verdict of guilt of a lesser included non-capital offense, and when the evidence would have supported such a verdict. The state argues that Beck does not control this case. In Beck, the state conceded that Beck's testimony would have entitled him to an instruction on a lesser included offense, absent the statutory prohibition. The state says that there was no evidence adduced by Evans which would require instruction on a lesser offense even if such instruction were not prohibited. It urges that we certify to the Alabama Supreme Court whether the constitutionally offensive portions of the Alabama Capital Punishment Statute may be severed from the remainder of the Statute. It reasons that Evans' conviction should be allowed to stand with the preclusion clause severed from the Statute.
We cannot reconcile this position with the Supreme Court's language in Beck :
In the final analysis the difficulty with the Alabama statute is that it interjects irrelevant considerations into the factfinding process, diverting the jury's attention from the central issue of whether the State has satisfied its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of a capital crime. Thus, on the one hand, the unavailability of the third option of convicting on a lesser included offense may encourage the jury to convict for an impermissible reason-its belief that the defendant is guilty of some serious crime and should be punished. On the other hand, the apparently mandatory nature of the death penalty may encourage it to acquit for an equally impermissible reason-that, whatever his crime, the defendant does not deserve death. In any particular case these two extraneous factors may favor the defendant or the prosecution or they may cancel each other out. But in every case they introduce a level of uncertainty and unreliability into the factfinding process that cannot be tolerated in a capital case.
--- U.S. at ----, 100 S.Ct. at 2392 (emphasis added).
Obviously we cannot conclude that Evans' trial...
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Wright v. State, 1 Div. 86
...were rejected in Hopper v. Evans, 456 U.S. 605, 613-14, 102 S.Ct. 2049, 2054, 72 L.Ed.2d 367, 374-375 (1982), reversing Evans v. Britton, 628 F.2d 400 (5th Cir.1980), supplemented, rehearing denied, 639 F.2d 221 (5th In order to determine what effect the preclusion clause had on the defenda......
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...the grounds that the statute's preclusion clause was unconstitutional and that the harmless error rule did not apply. Evans v. Britton, 628 F.2d 400 (1980) (per curiam), modified on rehearing, 639 F.2d 221 (1981) (per curiam). The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed ......
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...v. State, 396 So.2d 645, 664 (Ala.1981); Evans v. Britton, 472 F.Supp. 707, 713-714, 723-724 (SD Ala.1979), rev'd on other grounds, 628 F.2d 400 (CA5 1980), 639 F.2d 221 (1981), rev'd sub nom. Hopper v. Evans, 456 U.S. 605, 102 S.Ct. 2049, 72 L.Ed.2d 367 Following petitioner's conviction, t......
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...U.S. 625, 100 S.Ct. 2382, 65 L.Ed.2d 392 (1980); Evans v. Britton, 472 F.Supp. 707, 718 (S.D.Ala.1979), rev'd on other grounds, 628 F.2d 400 (5th Cir. 1980). While the jury is not the final sentencing authority under the capital sentencing scheme set out in the statute, the requirement that......